How to Naturally Boost Fertility (And Why 1 in 6 Couples Can't Conceive Today)

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0:40Start today at equinox.com. I want to date with Rawls, Carty says. Rawls? Raka asks. This is the love story of real-hinged couple Carty and Raka. Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan. Listen to the free audiobook now. Today, I want to walk you through how to support fertility naturally using foods, herbs, and lifestyle medicine. I've worked with thousands of women, helping them regulate their hormones and their cycles in order to get pregnant. And the good news is that if you follow biblical and functional medicine principles, you can naturally improve fertility. Listen to this study. Harvard followed more than 17 ,000 women for eight years to answer one question.

1:27What can you eat and how can you live that actually changes your odds of conceiving, that improves your fertility. And here's what they found in the study. Yes, what you eat makes a major difference in your fertility and your chance of conception. Let me ask you a really important question. Do you feel chronically run down, foggy, and inflamed? Like your body is carrying a load it can't seem to put down. And you're tired of being told everything looks normal. Now here's the thing. When toxins and oxidative stress build up faster than your cells can clear them, it quietly drains your energy and drives symptoms head to toe.

2:07And conventional blood work simply isn't designed to catch these things. I'm currently offering a simple at-home blood test designed to measure the right biomarkers, the ones that reveal what's really driving your hormones, inflammation, and metabolism. You'll also get a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to help you connect the dots between your symptoms and your cellular health and discover ways that you can work with the Health Institute to finally find lasting healing. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. And so headlines broke this week that showed that Dr.

2:45Anthony Fauci was texting another doctor, and he believed it was plausible that the COVID vaccine was a risk to pregnant women, especially increasing the risk of miscarriages. Dr. Fauci wrote specifically in his text, word for word, I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of since many people have significant cytokine storms and fever after the second dose. This theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So he actually knew that there was a risk there and said nothing. Now you might be asking, is there any proof or evidence that there was an increased risk?

3:28Well, there is some. There was a 2025 Israeli study and this was done on over 200 ,000 pregnancies. In this study looked at data that actually compared fetal losses after vaccination with expected losses based on pre-pandemic data, adjusting for things like gestational age and other individual risk factors. So all those things were removed. Women receiving dose one of an mRNA vaccine almost entirely from Pfizer during the weeks of 8 to 13 had about 13 fetal losses per 100 pregnancies versus only 9 should have been expected. So that's an excess of 4 per 100 pregnancies. So this potentially could have caused 4 % more miscarriages.

4:16And then they looked at this for the third dose, and it showed an excess of 2 losses per 100 pregnancies. So in this study, again, large-scale study had done over 200 ,000 women, there was absolutely an increased risk according to the study. This was also done in a Scottish study. A peer-reviewed Scottish study found that women receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine had a 17 % higher odds of miscarriage compared with historical controls. However, the results in the study were not as clear as the Israeli study. So here's what I want to tell you. There are studies that say that, yes, this likely did increase the risk.

4:51There are other studies that were done that said, you know, really there was no difference. It's very hard to tell based on the studies with absolute certainty. But I can tell you this from a father's perspective and knowing my wife, we deserve to know, right? We deserve to know if something potentially was increasing the risk of conception and miscarriage. By the way, you also might wonder, well, how could it cause that? Well, here's how this works. You know, with a vaccine, chemical messengers called cytokines are released, triggering an immune response. Cytokines tend to be also connected to inflammation, so inflammation and immune response, which can also lead to symptoms such as fever, chills, fatigue, and body aches.

5:31But the cascade would look like this. You get a vaccination, you have a strong immune activation, you have increased cytokines, then you have an inflammatory response or something like a fever, and then this is a stress on the body, and for some women significant. If you have this around early pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, the embryo is attached to the uterus and the placenta is just beginning to form. Because this is such a sensitive stage of development, some scientists believe that strong inflammatory response could increase the risk of miscarriage. So that excess inflammation is impacting placental development.

6:10Now I want to move past that news now, but I think it's important to know what's increasing your risk of infertility and conception. And that very may well have caused this in some women. Now, what I want to do now is I do want to move forward and walk you through exactly how to support your fertility starting today. And so here's the reframe. Your body will not prioritize building a baby if it believes the conditions aren't safe. Not enough fuel, too much inflammation, your blood sugar is swinging, your thyroid is running slow, your stress hormones are exceedingly high? Because, right, your body's smart.

6:44It says, well, if there's this high, high level of stress, I don't have the energy and resources to create new life. So your body waits until it feels safe and secure before it creates. And so the reality is one in six couples worldwide face infertility. Think about that. One in six. This is far more common than people realize. And when we're talking about root causes, here's a few things to look at. Okay, where does the infertility typically come from. Infertility gets treated actually more commonly or has for a long time as a women's issue. And the workup usually starts and ends there, but the male factor is contributing nearly half, not quite, but very close.

7:24Okay. So around 35 % of infertility tends to be more of the female factor, but 30 % very close behind is due to the male factor. Both partners typically being the issue together is 20 % and unexplainable is around 15 % according to medical research. So if you're looking to conceive, it is important that both the woman and the man both look to improve their fertility simultaneously. Now, before I dive deeper, I do have a quick favor. If this is already helping you better understand your body and the truth about fertility, hit the subscribe button. It's free. It takes two seconds and it helps this episode reach someone who needs it right now and also keeps you up on the latest of what's going on in natural health.

8:10Now let's dive in and look at the root causes from a functional medicine standpoint. Okay, number one, blood sugar and insulin issues. Okay, this is the most common cause of infertility I see, and it's also the most reversible. High insulin tells the ovaries to make more testosterone, and it disrupts the signal that triggers ovulation. By the way, that's also the biggest issue that causes PCOS or PMOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, or now as it's termed, really more of a metabolic syndrome. And by the way, you don't have to be overweight for this. There are plenty of women with normal BMI that have a high fasting insulin throwing their blood sugar off.

8:47So that is the number one root cause I see in practice. It's the number one cause of PCOS and PMOS. So it's just bringing your blood sugar back into balance. And the great news is that's incredibly easy to do if you know how to do it. And here are the big two. Eat more protein, eat more fiber, right? Less sugar, less refined carbs, protein, protein, protein, fiber, fiber, fiber. What that could look like is meat, right? Grass-fed burger, filet of fish, eggs, chicken breast, but get more meat and protein shake, but get more protein and then get more fiber. Vegetables, high, low glycemic fruits like berries and pomegranates and apples, sweet potato, avocado, more healthy fats, extra virgin olive oil.

9:29If you follow that diet, it will make a tremendous difference. The number two cause of infertility, this is especially in women, are thyroid issues, especially high thyroid antibodies. The thyroid sets the metabolic tempo for the whole body, and reproduction is extremely sensitive to it. Even mildly low thyroid function is associated with anovulation, luteal phase problems, and oftentimes a higher miscarriage rate. And here's the part that gets missed. You can have a normal TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone, and still have elevated thyroid antibodies, which is independently associated with pregnancy loss.

10:07I'd say the most important things to look at, truly, are free T3, so your T3 thyroid hormone, and your TPO antibodies. Making sure those are in balance or working to get those in balance is more important than the other thyroid markers. Root cause number three, your body doesn't have enough nutrients. You cannot build a healthy pregnancy if you don't have the raw materials, right? Vitamin D is probably the most important. Vitamin D acts also as a hormone. It actually acts more like a hormone than a vitamin and its receptors sit right in the ovaries in the uterus lining, okay? So incredibly important for fertility.

10:44Low iron is also very important that, you know, because if iron's low, your body's lacking oxygen. and low vitamin B12 and folate, those affect egg quality and neural tube development. I do wanna also mention in men in particular, zinc is critical. When I'm looking at blood work on men, two tests I'm always looking for, I'm looking at vitamin D and I'm looking at zinc because those are also the two nutrients that impact testosterone the most. So knowing what those numbers are or generally supporting your body with those nutrients is very important. The root cause number four is stress and safety signals, okay?

11:21If your body does not feel safe and secure, and if your body already feels overwhelmed, it impacts your hormone in such a way that causes infertility, right? Especially high cortisol, right? Those adrenal hormones are just constantly going. That's also impacting the thyroid hormones. That's driving estrogen, progesterone down. That's a big deal. Now, and any woman that has been pregnant knows that there is this thing that starts happening, even sometimes before you're pregnant, where you want to feel nested, right? You want to feel tucked in. Again, I've explained this before, and here's how I like to describe it.

11:53Here is how you should start to feel if you want to get pregnant. You should feel like you're cuddled up on a couch with your favorite blanket on. It's winter. It's snowing out. You've got a fireplace, Christmas tree. You've got your favorite hot beverage, whether it's coffee or hot cocoa in your hand, your family is around, and you just feel safe, secure, peace, joy, wrapped in a blanket, you just, you have that sense, that heightened sense of safety and fulfillment. That's what you want. You want to get there mentally, spiritually, and then that's going to impact the physical. If you do not feel safe and secure, if you don't feel the word nested, I'll tell you a quick note.

12:34Chelsea and I, when we were looking to have our first child, we were at the time actually renting a two-bedroom apartment because we had just moved from somewhere. And Chelsea said to me, she said, hey, I want to get a house. I said, okay, well, you know, can we, you know, wait six months at this point? She's like, I really like to do it now. I'm like, why? She's like, because I'm, I'm starting to nest. Like, I feel like I need to have that extra bedroom, get that ready for the baby. And I, and you know what? I didn't find her. I thought, you know, I understand that. I understand. And so let's go ahead and get you safe and secure and feeling that.

13:02And for men, that should be your primary goal. What can you do to make your woman feel nurtured, loved, safe, and secure? Start bringing her her favorite coffee. Start doing everything you can to make her feel that way. And sometimes that alone is the biggest cause of fertility issues. Okay. Number five, sometimes there are chemicals in the way. There are so many endocrine disruptors in our homes today. Phthalates in plastics and fragrances, BPA and receipts and canned linings, these forever chemicals in nonstick cookware, glyphosate on our food, these chemicals are everywhere. And listen, do not stress yourself out about it, feeling like you have to avoid everything because you don't.

13:45You just wanna do your best to avoid much of it, right? And make the simple swaps. Glass instead of plastic, cast iron or stainless steel instead of more plastic, drink filtered water, if you do that, that's going to cover most of it. Okay, root cause number six. This is the half nobody test. This has to do with the men out there. Sperm counts in industrialized countries have fallen more than 50 % since the 1970s. A semen analysis costs a fraction of what one IVF cycle does. And generally men getting blood work done to look at their testosterone levels and what impacts testosterone is incredibly helpful.

14:25And so root cause number six is men do everything you can to support your testosterone. Lift weights, get deep sleep, don't drink a lot of alcohol because that turns into estrogen in your body, or at least causes more estrogen conversion in your body, right? So get good sleep, lift weights, stop drinking out of plastic containers, do all of those things you know you should. And keeping cortisol low, right? Have fun, stay active. All right, I want to walk you through when I'm doing blood work, some of the markers I really like to look at when it comes to a fertility panel. The first ones here are fasting insulin and looking at your HbA1c levels, right?

14:59Looking at blood sugar is critical. The other thing I like to look at is the thyroid panel. What do your thyroid hormones look like? Number three, vitamin D, right? You want to be at least 40, if not 50 or above. Ferritin. Let's look at these iron stores. Let's see where your iron's at. Number five, this is for men, looking at your free testosterone levels. We need testosterone, especially it needs to also be freed up to do its thing. Number six, let's look at estradiol and estrogen. And also if you can, FSH and LH. Number seven, progesterone. And also looking at you, are you ovulating? Number eight, zinc.

15:32That's really important, especially for male fertility. Number nine, high sensitivity, CRP. So that's looking at inflammation levels in the body. And number 10, if needed, semen analysis. Okay, these are probably the most important things to know. Now, here's what I'll say as well. You don't have to get testing done. If you do a lot of the things I've talked about, you're gonna naturally improve your fertility and you'll probably be just fine. But if you want to do extra or you're stuck, these are some of the blood markers that matter most. By the way, I want to share with you a study that just proves that your lifestyle makes a huge difference in fertility.

16:02There was a study done that found that women who followed five or more healthy lifestyle factors, such as eating more fruits and vegetables and mead and being more physically active, made a major difference in their fertility. In fact, healthy lifestyle habits increased fertility by nearly 70%. So think about that. The food you're eating, going for walks during the day, doing these natural lifestyle habits could improve your fertility by 70%. By the way, these habits stacked for every one of the better habit you implement, right? Eating a healthy diet, moving and exercising, taking the right supplements, keeping stress low, they compound and your fertility goes up and up and up.

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17:23You'll get that for free. Also, you'll get a Heal Yourselves Masterclass where myself and Dr. Will Cole dive deep into advanced nutrition and healing principles and also 40 incredible longevity recipes. You'll get all now, that's$500 worth of content for free if you go to healyourselvesbook.com and get it today. Now there's one other bonus I wanna give you. You can also get an at-home blood work kit that goes through cellular markers. So you can actually see what are your levels of inflammation? What's your blood sugar? Are you deficient in key nutrients like vitamin D all in that blood kit? In fact, this blood work can typically cost anywhere from double to triple this amount.

18:00If you want to do this now, it's only$79 for a very limited time. It's our lowest price ever. And with it also comes a one-hour consultation. So you'll have real answers in hand. Again, that's healyourselvesbook.com. Just want to say thank you so much. I appreciate your support. All right, so we've looked at things from a functional medicine lens. I do want to take a minute now and talk about fertility from the Chinese medicine point of view. Okay, it's incredibly important. And I have helped a lot of women get pregnant through focusing on improving their health via Chinese medicine. And there are really a few patterns we see that can cause infertility that you can improve.

18:37Number one is called a kidney yang deficiency. Now, kidney yang deficiency tends to be tied to hypothyroidism, okay? The body is cold. So yang is tied to being anabolic and healing and regenerating. And the kidneys are really tied to that typically means adrenal glands in Chinese medicine. So it's your adrenal glands and thyroid are worn out. That's what that is. It's also a mitochondrial deficiency. Your mitochondria are worn out. And so what happens is your uterus is cold. Your extremities are cold. You have low basal body temperature. You take your body temperature and you're in the 97s, not the 98s.

19:11This can lead to late ovulation, cold hands and feet, a pale tongue. So what do you need to do there? You need to warm up your body. Stop drinking ice cold drinks. Stop eating salads. Warm your body. Foods that boost yang, heat, and generate more heat in the body are red meat, grass-fed beef, bison, lamb especially, extra virgin olive oil, herbs like cinnamon and ginger. doing things to, you know, you're much better off drinking a lot of soups than you are doing salad. So you want to think about like Thanksgiving, doing soups. That's the sort of diet you should follow to warm up the body. Pattern number two that affects fertility in Chinese medicine is what we call blood deficiency.

19:50Your blood is deficient. By the way, in order to make a placenta, there's so much blood that it takes to build that. And so what you'll start to see is like, I'll see on pictures, somebody sticks out their tongue and rather than being bright pink, it's like a pale pink. It has almost a whiteness to it. Not on the top, but the tongue itself. And again, this tends to be tied to low iron or ferritin, sometimes low vitamin B12. And in order to fix this, we just build the blood. Again, it's red meat, it's grass-fed beef, it's dark poultry, it's dark green leafy vegetables. It's beets are fantastic, one of the best things you could eat.

20:24Drinking bone broth, eating dates, baked cherries, Foods that build the blood make a tremendous difference. Pattern number three is called liver cheese stagnation. It's all about your liver's backed up. When that happens, it causes symptoms of PMS, irritability, breast tenderness, cramping, clots, cycles that shift unpredictably. This is the pattern of women under sustained pressure. High cortisol, it's all about that. Cortisol's high, the liver gets backed up. Sometimes women also have constipation, that can happen. And so the thing you wanna do there is you want to consume a diet of a lot of steamed vegetables, a lot of things that are fresh, but you got to reduce stress, going on more walks, saying no more, getting things off your schedule and actually hitting things is actually good.

21:07Releasing pickleball, tennis, getting acupuncture and personal care, just moving in general is going to help with that. And then the last one here, it's what we call damp phlegm. It's really tied to candida overgrowth and insulin resistance. So it's candida overgrowth and insulin resistance. It's too much sugar and your blood sugar is imbalanced. This is where getting a lot of cinnamon is great. This is good changing your diet to where, again, you get rid of processed food, sugars, all the excess bread and the chips and everything else. And you do more things like sweet potatoes. You do more apples.

21:39You do meat. You do more vegetables. But you need to balance blood sugar and get rid of the excess candida. And again, this is the pattern that most corresponds to PCOS and PMOS. And you fix that by typically balancing your blood sugar. And so here's what the diet would typically look like for most people. Rather than cold food, eat warming foods. Lots of soups, lots of warm dishes. So it's cooked meat. It's baked or steamed or sautéed vegetables. It's olive oil. It's avocado. It's baked apples and baked berries, right? You want to warm the body. It's doing beets. These will move the needle the most.

22:15Hey, no matter what you've been told about cortisol, it's not the actual enemy and your goal isn't to eliminate it. It's to bring it back into balance. Now, chronic stress can throw healthy cortisol completely out of sync, and that ripple effect impacts more than just how you feel every day. Elevated cortisol can influence your appetite, blood sugar regulation, and how your body manages weight, which makes supporting healthy cortisol balance a real, incredibly important part of weight management and overall health. That's exactly why I use active peptides cortisol. It's not just about helping you feel relaxed for a moment.

22:53It's formulated to help bring your body's natural systems into balance and adapt over time. Inside this formula, you'll find clinically studied peptides paired with efficacious amounts of L-theanine, ashwagandha, magnolia rue, and rhodiola adaptogens, which have a long history of tradition and backed by modern science. Right now, new customers can save$10 by using my code DRX10. Give your body the support it needs to handle stress the way God designed it to. Click the link to check out this incredible cortisol balancing product from Ancient Nutrition. And then when it comes to supplements worth considering, a prenatal multivitamin.

23:34If you have MTHFR, take methylfolate. If not, regular folate should be fine. Vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, CoQ10, that supports mitochondrial health in the egg. Myoinositol, this is especially good if you've got PCOS, magnesium. And for men, zinc and antioxidants support motility and sperm count. And then from there, no, you've got about a 90-day window for improvement, right? Eggs take about 90 days to mature, sperm about 74. and today's changes you make now will show up in three months. You also wanna fix your sleep schedule. Seven to nine hours a night. This also helps your cycle run properly.

24:15Move most days, but don't overtrain. Very high volume can cause problems as well and suppress ovulation. And focus on both partners. This is a team project and that's what the data says as well. And the last thing I would say is pray. You know, I love what Psalms 37.7 says, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. If you take one thing from today, take this. Fertility is not a verdict on your body. It's a signal. And from it, here's the good news, signals can change. We can change your signals and your hormones, getting your body back into balance. And if we focus on doing the right things naturally, your body can heal and you can greatly improve your fertility.

24:54Two ways to go deeper. First, I created a fertility foundation guide just for you. It walks you through an ideal eating plan of the foods. if you're wondering what are the ideal foods and meals for me to eat, they're in there. The ideal supplements and the dosages, everything is in there for you to follow. You can get that if you go to the show notes and download my fertility guide, you can get it in there right now. And the second thing is if you wanna dive deeper into these advanced nutrition principles, you can check out my book, Heal Your Cells on amazon.com. Now I wanna say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr.